


goodbye to love (it's just a ride that will push you)

by taakos



Series: money, power, glory [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Fake AH Crew, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, i'm warning u man, ryan is actually not okay in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taakos/pseuds/taakos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Am I faulty? Is there something wrong with me?" Ryan, then James, would whisper during the night, long after his parents had fallen asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	goodbye to love (it's just a ride that will push you)

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the song Degausser by Brand New

When Ryan was a child, he went by James. He never felt quite right, though. All the other children were talking about their imaginary friends, or interacting with each other, while Ryan was lonely. He wasn't alone (he had many friends, in fact), but he was lonely. No matter how many kids he played with, no matter how many play-dates his mother arranged, Ryan was lonely.

For one, he was missing a lot of emotions. (Ryan noticed this at ten, when all the other children were happy about something, and he felt nothing. To avoid confusion, he acted happy, but felt oddly empty.) He just seemed to simply, lack some emotions. The core ones, the ones that make or break a childhood. Emotions like love, empathy, sympathy; they just seemed to not be there.

When something others deemed sad happened, he felt nothing. When other children cried, he didn't feel anything for them. (Gary scraped his knee and he is sobbing as if it is the end of the world. James doesn't know why. As Gary continues to cry James cocks his head and studies him. Scraping your knee hurts, but not that much, James thinks. Pain induces emotion, yes, but the look of absolute anguish on Gary's face perturbs James.)

"Am I faulty? Is there something wrong with me?" Ryan, then James, would whisper during the night, long after his parents had fallen asleep.

His lacking in the emotion department went unnoticed for many years, due to Ryan's excellent acting skills. But then, came high school. (His mother seems to think her son is the most handsome thing she's ever seen. James doesn't care for appearance, really.) All of a sudden, girls are interested in him. (During middle school, James was able to go unnoticed most of the time, and avoid others.)

Her name is Karen Lochre. She is blonde and tall, as tall as James, and nice. Karen asks James out on a date, he accepts, because he has nothing else to do, really. All of a sudden, they go steady, and they've been dating for three years, and Karen loves him. (Karen doesn't notice how distant James is, ever. She's a smart girl, really, but she's not intuitive. Or maybe he just masks it well.)

Love isn't a foreign emotion to Ryan, James, whoever. He's seen it, heard it, noticed it, but he's never felt it. Every night when he was a teenager, he would listen to his parents say, "We love you, James." Ryan would parrot that back to them and go to bed. It was routine. (You don't ruin routine.) Love, he supposes, is a nonnegotiable thing in familiar matters. He doesn't love his parents, though, he doesn't particularly love anything or anyone. He doesn't love Karen.

He says that to her and is slapped in the face. She is outraged.

"What was this to you then, James? What were we? Was I just making out to you? A pair of lips? What is wrong with you?" She is sobbing. Yet, she is absolutely raging. James doesn't know what to do.

What would someone else do? He thinks. Would they say, "I'm sorry?" But, James isn't sorry. If he's thinking about it, he's never been sorry. His relationship with Karen was fun, sure, but that was about it. He's read about love and heartbreak, but he feels nothing as Karen stomps out of his backyard to her car. James has never been so confused.

(Is honesty not the best policy? Did she expect James to love her? The truth, James thinks, brings light to situations that are often better left in the dark.)

He hears Karen's car start up and drive away. He walks into his house, grabs a soda, and sits down in the kitchen. His mother is putting away groceries and notices his confused face.

"Honey, what's wrong?"

Her voice brings James out of his daze. "Oh, uh, I guess Karen just broke up with me. Yeah."

His mother drops the bag of groceries she was holding and puts her hand over her mouth. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry. What for?"

James has to lie. He has to, there is no other choice. (His parents think him a loving, caring boy, not this cold, confused almost-man.) "She, uh, said she was seeing someone else. She liked him better, I guess." (He's told better lies.)

James' mother is feeling more heartbreak than he is, how interesting. "Oh, really? Oh, dear, are you okay?"

He drains his soda and lies again. "Yeah, I think I'm just gonna go lie down, or something."

Her mothering instincts instantly kick in after that one and she nods. "Okay, hon. I'm sorry. You'll find better." His mother embraces him lightly and kisses his cheek.

Time passes, as it does, and James graduates from high school. At the ceremony, he meets eyes with Karen Lochre. She looks sad. (He thinks, for a moment, that she may have actually loved him. Tis a pity he doesn't feel such things. Maybe in an alternate universe, he does. Maybe.)

James doesn't know what he wants to do after high school, so he kills himself. Or, at least he kills James. He recreates himself. (He leaves a heavy hearted suicide note for his parents, “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” At the end he writes, "Karen, you were right." for the hell of it. For some reason, he's angry at her for being in love with him. She shouldn't have wasted it on him.)

Ryan fakes the appropriate criteria and makes himself anew. He is no longer James Peter Grant, born in Atlanta, Georgia. He no longer has two loving parents and friends who like him. He is Ryan Haywood, born nowhere, child of no one, and friend to no one. (Maybe he was never James, maybe he was Ryan all along?)

For a while, he moves around a lot. Partially homeless, partially not. He does odd jobs, here and there, under different names. He becomes a model for a good chunk of time. He finds it all mundane. So, he becomes a mercenary and moves to Los Santos. (He figures James would never do this type of thing, so Ryan has to.)

Over the course of a couple years, he's famous. Everyone is terrified of him. (They remember him for one reason: the mask. Usually, he wears a black skull mask every time he has a job. For one, it conceals his identity (identities). Second, it's creepy as fuck, which helps when he's torturing people for information. Finally, it's pretty comfortable, and useful. The mask itself, after hours of remaking it, has an air filtration system. Clean air for days.)

And then, he saves Gavin Free's life. (Looking back, this was a mistake.) Gavin, for one, isn't that smart. It's like, you take every bad situation and move them away from him, and he somehow manages to make a bad situation. (Ryan, for the second time in his life, was confused as hell.) After saving Gavin's stupid life, Gavin offers him a place on his "boss-friend"'s crew.

James would say, "Fuck. No." and walk away, so Ryan says, "Okay." Ryan doesn't have any friends in Los Santos and being a mercenary is fun, but lonely. Maybe he could have friends and not do anything overly stupid. Maybe. (Maybe blow some shit up? That'd be cool. Yeah.)

Ryan meets Geoff and sees a man after his own heart. Geoff is a little bit crazy, which Ryan can appreciate. Geoff has to be a little bit crazy to put together this crew, because it's weird as hell.

Geoff is the leader, even though he's an alcoholic, and generally not good at making good decisions. (As if any of them are, really.)  Jack, Geoff's best friend, is second-in-command, and is a ginger. (Ryan doesn't know that much about her. He figures there isn't much to know.) There's Ray, who is an age above twenty (probably), and is the best sniper Ryan's met in a decade. Gavin, a Brit who got tired of Britain, who does God knows what at this point. Michael, a kid from New Jersey, who's the son of an Italian mob crew-boss, and carries too many explosives on him at all times. (Another man after Ryan's heart.)

And there's Ryan. A sociopath in his thirties who has constantly struggled with being himself. A man who has had so many jobs, names, and locations he's forgotten a good portion of them. A man who faked his own suicide after high school because he didn't want to be him anymore, and succeeded. (Ryan figures, if he could fake his own death, and not be found a decade and a half later; this crew thing might work out.)

(After the first big job, as they eat Michael’s cannoli, Geoff calls him a “crazy motherfucker”, except it isn’t mocking, it’s fond, almost. Maybe this whole “friend” thing will work out.)

Boy, was he wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> did someone say actualsociopath!ryan??? no?? well, you get it anyway, asshole. (i legit developed au!ryan from a profile of sociopathic traits and tendencies, if he ain't fucked up, i don't know what is) hopefully, by the end of this series, ryan will be 1. alive and 2. less of a sociopath and 3. will develop an ability to love fo rizzle. hopefully. i make no promises, although: before it gets better, it gets worse. interpret that as you will. WELL KIDS. THAT'S IT. SEE YOU AT THE NEXT ONE. HEART YOU <3 maybe geoff or jack next? idk whatever


End file.
